Scarecrows and Sparrows
by screwydame
Summary: ***CHAPTER 7 - featuring the TENTH DOCTOR - now posted!***  The Weeping Angels send Sally Sparrow to 1913, where she meets a very odd young fellow by the name of Jeremy Baines, only to discover he isn't who he says he is.
1. Chapter 1

**Scarecrows and Sparrows**

_a post-'Blink'/'Human Nature'/'Family of Blood' Doctor Who fanfic_

**Chapter One:**

**"Somewhere Better or Somewhere Worse"**

Not blinking is rather difficult.

It's terribly, dreadfully difficult in fact.

She had been through this once before, of course, and all not so very long ago. When she went into Wester Drumlins. That god-awful house. What had ever possessed her to go into that dreadful house? For photographs, she'd told herself. To take black-and-white photographs of an abandoned old house so that everyone could see how sensitive and artsy she was. How evolved she was. What a fool she'd been then. That was before she lost Kathy of course. Before she lost Billy. Oh, poor Billy. That poor, sweet man. She could have had an entire life with him. A good life with children and a house full of all the love she could handle but of course, she didn't have that. Didn't have any of that. Because she just had to go into that house.

And now, not two years later, here she was again. At Wester Drumlins, climbing over the gnarled front gate, dropping her bag down and then dropping her slender body down right after it. She didn't know why she had returned. Maybe only to see if they were still there. Or maybe because Larry had started being very distant, and her friend Nancy had told her she saw him down the pub with some other girl. Maybe because she read in the paper that a woman named Sally Nightengale had been killed in a hit-and-run accident; a woman named Sally Nightengale who was the youngest daughter of her dear old friend Kathy. It had got her to thinking. It had got her to thinking, what if she went to Wester Drumlins and found them again? And what if, this time, she let them take her?

What if she let the Angels take her?

She might end up where Kathy had gone. Or where Billy had gone. Or she might end up where Sally Nightengale had gone; a grim thought. Or she might even end up somewhere else altogether, somewhere better... or somewhere worse. But she wouldn't know until she tried.

So she jumped down from the gate and she picked up her bag and she hurried up the front walk to the house. She opened the door carefully, her eyes immediately drawn to the wallpaper she had peeled away all those years ago, and what she had found written there:

_Beware the weeping angels. Oh and duck. No really duck! Sally Sparrow. DUCK, NOW! Love from The Doctor (1969)_

Just looking at it now tears came to her eyes. She missed Kathy every day, and not a day went by that she didn't think about watching Billy die in that hospital bed, so old and weak, a shadow of his former self.

So much had happened. So much had changed.

She heard a noise behind her. A creak. A shadow passed over the writing on the wall. She turned around with a gasp, and her dark brown eyes didn't have to go very far before she saw it.

The Angel.

She and Larry knew it had to happen one day. The light in the basement where the Angels had been trapped had been blinking out even as they left the place. And once the lightbulb died the Angels would be in pitch darkness, and they could move about as they saw fit without danger of looking each other in the eyes again. It had been a temporary fix, what the Doctor did. And all the days that had passed between then and now it seemed that Sally was waiting for them to come back for her. To seek out vengeance for what she had done to them; to set things right and put her into the past where she belonged. Larry had accused her of being obsessed, and she had accused Larry of being in denial - surely they would come for him as well. All the arguments were likely what had driven such a deep wedge between them. And now, for what it was worth - which wasn't much, in all honesty - she knew she had been right all along.

It was standing down the hall. Perhaps two yards away. Her breath caught in her throat and her eyes went wide. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. Maybe she's not ready to give up on this life just yet.

She turned her head to look at the front door. Not so far away. She could reach it in perhaps six steps. But...

She looked back at the angel. Twelve feet away now. So close. So very close. By the time she lunged for the door, she might make it... Or she might not. Was it a risk she was willing to take?

Eyes wide open, staring at the angel with its teeth bared and its stone hands hooked into claws, Sally Sparrow sidestepped inch by inch to the front door. Or at least, that's where she thought she was going. But she couldn't look away to make sure. So when her feet stumbled over the bottom of the coat rack, she was taken completely by surprise. She had to look away to grab onto the wall and stop herself from falling, and when she looked back, the angel was only three steps away. Just three steps. If she blinked... if she only blinked...

But her eyes were already going dry. And not just that. She had something in one of them as well. An eyelash or a bit of mascara, maybe. It didn't matter what it was, only that it was there, and it stung, made her whole eye feel like it was on fire. Tears clouded her vision abruptly, making it go blurry. She had to rub her eye. It was a physical need, a compulsion almost. She couldn't stop herself. She couldn't help herself.

With one eye on the Angel, she reached up and rubbed at her bad one. But it only made things worse, made the bit of debris grind itself in even further.

When she took her hand away, she blinked.

There was a sensation of being grabbed, of being yanked through some thick, viscous substance. And the briefest, bone-chilling cold.

When she opened her eyes again she was standing in the middle of a firing squad. Sixteen boys stood at rifles, half-ducked behind sandbags. They wore helmets, old-fashioned helmets of a regulation military green color, like overturned spaghetti bowls on their heads. None of them looked a day over eighteen.

She gave a shriek, putting both hands out in front of her. "Don't shoot!" she exclaimed, but she could see right away that there was never any danger in that. The boys were all staring at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed, too stunned to move, let alone shoot. And then, after a moment, they all started chattering excitedly at once.

"Did you see that?"

"She came out of bloody nowhere!"

"Like a ghost, she was!"

"Look at how she's dressed!"

A few low whistles accompanied that last bit, and that was when Sally put her hands down, looking down at herself and thinking that she wasn't dressed inappropriately at all; she wore a t-shirt and a skirt that hit just above her knees and a pair of combat boots, for Pete's sake. Or at least she fancied they were combat boots; these Army boys in training might think differently about that.

When she looked up again, an adult was heading toward her - a tall, older man with slicked back blonde hair and a stern set to his jaw; when her eyes traveled lower she saw he was wearing a full suit with a tie tucked into his vest; it reminded her of something a waiter at a wedding might wear. Except for the chain hanging from the vest. Somehow she was absolutely certain there would be a fobwatch on the end of that chain. This man looked like something out of an old movie; the stuffy headmaster at a boys' reform school.

"See here now, young lady," the man spoke up gruffly as he stomped toward her. "I don't know who you are or how you got here, but target practice is no place for half-naked little girls to be mucking about. Back into the kitchen with you, then, before I take a mind to turn you over my knee and give you a sound caning."

The man reached for her arm but Sally ripped it away before he could get a good grasp, her dark blonde eyes furrowing in outrage. "I beg your pardon?" she exclaimed, a dry, shocked laugh barking its way up her throat. "You'll do what? I don't know who you think you are, but-"

"You know very well who I am, young lady," the blonde man insisted. "I am Professor Hayes, and I serving as Headmaster until we find a suitable replacement for Mr. Rocastle." At the mention of the name, a few of the boys squirmed and looked down at their shoes. Sally wanted to contemplate on this further but Hayes immediately demanded her attention. "So as far as you're concerned, I the am the ultimate authority at the moment. Should you deign to question that authority I shall speak to Matron Redfern about your swift and immediate removal from your duties here at the School."

"School?" Sally echoed, her eyes darting over to the boys behind the gun turrets, taking in their cropped suit jackets and high-waisted, pintucked pants and thinking how strange they looked; again thinking of an old black-and-white film her Grandfather had sometimes watched when he was still alive; a film about a reform school in the English countryside during World War I.

"Did I stutter, girl?" Hayes pressed, his lips pursing impatiently. "School. School. The Farringham School for Boys. Are you deaf, young lady, or do you honestly not know where you work?" He looked down at her. "And where did you get this ridiculous costume? Where is your uniform?"

Sally looked down at herself stupidly again, then back up at the Headmaster. She steeled herself for the question she was about to ask; the question she knew she had to ask no matter how much she didn't want to.

"Forgive me, Sir," she very slowly, very calmly replied, even though inside her nerve endings were twisting and knotting together like the chains of a swing do when the little girl sitting on it spins it around enough times. Soon they'll be intertwined all the way up to the top and she'll have no choice but to let go and ride the dizzy downward spiral around and around and around.

"This is going to sound... dreadfully thick," she admitted. "But... if you wouldn't mind humoring me for just a moment... would you be so kind as to tell me what year this is?"

Hayes' lips pressed so tightly together that he barely had a mouth anymore, and he narrowed his eyes at her.

"When I find out who is behind this ridiculous prank..." he said, but did not follow through on his threat. Instead, he made a low growl of disapproval, and then he spoke a number that filled Sally's stomach with ice, and all at once the chains hit their limit and she went spinning down and down and out of control, falling to a dead faint in the grass.

The number he said was 1913.

...To Be Continued...


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two:**

**"I Swear I Will Believe"**

Joan Redfern was a mild-mannered, well-put together woman. She was not a pretty woman, but she was perhaps a _handsome_ woman, if such a thing exists. Her features were light and fair but somehow severe, all the same. And she didn't smile. Not even with her eyes. In fact, her eyes were the saddest eyes that Sally had ever seen. Their sadness went down deep, so deep it seemed bottomless, and yet, there was also a sense of peace there. A serenity that comes with knowing your life may never be filled with light again.

She sat behind a desk, her hands clasped in her lap, as she studied Sally with those sad and peaceful blue eyes.

"Tell me," she began, "How you came to be standing in the middle of the shooting range at target practice when no one saw you approach?"

"Miss Redfern-"

"_Matron_ Redfern, if you please," Joan interrupted quite mildly, giving one quick bow of her head. "Besides the fact that it is my title, I must also confess I am far past being referred to as a Miss, in any case. I was married once, though that was a very long time ago." She thought that perhaps, if she were being very honest with herself, she had really been married _twice_ - once in this life, and once in a life that never existed; a life where her second husband had been a man named John Smith; a man who was not a man at all but only pretended so very convincingly for all too short a time.

"All right then," Sally replied, returning the matron's serene tone of voice. "_Matron_ Redfern. I know it sounds odd, but it's as I told Professor Hayes when I came to - Even if I _could_ find the words to tell you how it happened, you wouldn't believe me."

Just the ghost of a smile which looked just as deeply sad as her eyes did touched one side of Joan's mouth, and then it was gone. "I believe a great many things these days," she wistfully replied, and for a moment her eyes went somewhere very far away. "A great many things which I never could have imagined I would believe. Not even in my wildest dreams."

Her eyes returned to Sally's, and they were sharper, somehow.

"Tell me where you came from, Sally Sparrow," Joan Redfern implored her. "Tell me and I swear I will believe."

Sally stared across the desk at Joan Redfern for what felt like a very long time. She stared at her unblinkingly, though she knew she could have blinked if she so wished. There was no sense of danger coming from this woman, and yet Sally thought she could feel some other brand of tension baking off of her; filling the space between them across the desk in shimmery waves like car exhaust on a hot summer's day. It was anticipation, Sally thought; and perhaps a kind of desperate longing. A hunger for something which Sally hoped - but very much doubted - that she could provide. It was this unspoken need which made her answer truthfully, though she knew the risk was great that she would be locked away in a London sanitarium before the day was out. It's funny; she had always wondered what Bedlam looked like while it was still active. Now, it seemed, she might get her chance to find out. Firsthand.

Finally, she spoke.

"I came from London," she said. "But not your London. Not here. Not now. A different London, far away. I was... I was in a house. This old abandoned house called the Drumlins. It hadn't been lived in since..." She thought about it, and, for a moment, smiled. "Well, since _now_, I guess." The thought mystified her; that the Drumlins would still be there on that same dead-end street, filled with rich people having parties; standing around drinking highballs and every now and then stopping to dance the waltz. Perhaps going outside for a cigarette on the terrace to admire the beautiful stone statues along the way...

She shivered.

"This house," she continued. "Had statues. Old statues; incredibly old. Statues of angels. Angels crying into their hands. Except... they weren't statues, not really." Her eyes met Joan's across the desk. "When you turned your back... they moved."

Joan was instantly reminded of the scarecrows. The scarecrows that weren't scarecrows; the scarecrows that moved. She looked away; swallowed involuntarily. Thought again of John.

"I believe you," she said, her voice so low it was barely more than a whisper. She put a hand to her throat as if she could massage away the sudden lump which had formed there. "Please... go on."

"When they touched you," Sally continued. "When they _got _you. They transported you. Through time and space. They dumped you off wherever they saw fit. They did it to my friend Kathy. And they did it to Billy. And now... now they've done it to me."

_Through time and space_, Joan thought, and the journal came to her mind, then. The journal of impossible dreams. The journal with the ink drawings of the woman with the long hair, and the little tin dog, and the magic box. The magic box which she herself had seen, that big blue box that took him wherever he wanted to go. Anywhere in time and space.

After seeing these things, it was not so difficult to believe that stone angels had transported Sally Sparrow here. After meeting the Doctor, it was not so difficult to believe that at all.

"Sally," she began. "How many years into the future have you traveled from?"

This question was easy for Sally. She had done her calculating on the shooting range. It had not taken more than a second or two.

"Ninety-six," Sally solemnly replied. "Ninety-six years, Matron Redfern."

"_Ninety-_six..." Joan echoed, losing her voice at the end of it. She felt as though the world had tilted ever so slightly to one side underneath her chair. She took a moment to catch her breath. "My word," she said. "That's nearly an entire century. You poor girl. You're so very far from home."

Sally exhaled the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding in her lungs, a _whoosh_ of pure relief spilling past her lips. "You _do_ believe me," she exclaimed. "I don't know why, but you really do, don't you?"

"I do," Joan replied, and in her voice was a note of unmistakable regret. She wished she didn't believe this girl. She wished she still lived in a world where she would find the things that Sally Sparrow had told her to be completely mad; the fanciful lies of a bored teenage girl. But she simply didn't live in that world. Not anymore. Not since John Smith went away.

She stood from her desk. "And if you care to hear an impossible story told by an aging widow, then I would be quite happy to explain why." She walked around the desk and headed to the door, then stood to one side, holding it open.

"But first," she said. "I think perhaps there's something I ought to show you."

...To Be Continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three:**

**"Best Not To"**

Sally followed Joan dutifully down the hall to another room within the dormitory. It was a boy's room, or perhaps more appropriately, a man's room. It smelled of the lingering ghost of a man's aftershave. There was a shoe polishing kit in a wooden box on the floor by the bureau, and on the bed was a freshly laid-out suit, pressed and folded neatly. And yet, Sally got the impression that it had been some time since any man had set foot in this room.

Joan strode confidently into the room, not bothering to take in the surroundings. She had seen them all before; had held his pillow to her face to breathe in the smell of him. The smell that was fading so very fast. She had no interest in his smell today. Today she only wanted what was in the top desk drawer. She went to it, unlocking it with a small key she kept around her neck, and she slid it open. Inside was a small, leather-bound book. She smiled when she saw it; small, sad. She took it in her hands and undid the strap, then turned to look at Sally.

"A man once lived in this room," she said. "A man I thought I knew. His name was John Smith. He was a teacher here, for a little while. All too short a while, I should think." She looked down at the book in her hands. "Every night he dreamed. Dreamed vividly, of impossible things. Things that could never be. He wrote all of those dreams down in this journal, and one day, he showed them to me. He said it was as if, in his dreams, he had lived another man's life."

She handed the book over then, giving it to Sally, who took it reverently and carefully opened it up. She skimmed past handwritten notes, some words underlined. She skimmed past an ink sketch of a beautiful, modern-looking woman and another of a sort of tin robot-dog. Sketches depicting things which should not have existed in the mind of a man from 1913.

"I don't understand," she said, still flipping through the pages, but more slowly now. Catching snippets of words and phrases here and there. "_The Slitheen from Raxacoricofallapatorius_," she recited as carefully as a girl in the finals of a spelling bee, and then she shook her head, a slight scoffing laugh escaping her lips. "It's all... nonsense," she proclaimed.

That small, sad smile lit Joan's face once more. "That's what I told him, too," she said. "That it was all nonsense. Dreams of a man with a big imagination, that's all. The stuff of children's books and lunatic's diaries all twined together in some fantastic waltz." She shook her head. "Except it wasn't. I found that out much later. It wasn't nonsense. None of it was. It was all true. It was all... real. He had been living another man's life, my John. He had been another man for hundreds and hundreds of years before he ever became the John Smith I knew. In fact, it was the life he was living then that was a dream. The life he was living with me."

Joan took two steps, closing the distance between herself and Sally, and she turned the pages, then stopped on a sketch of a large police box with a blinking red light on top.

"He wasn't even a proper man," she explained. "Not really. He was something else entirely. He came from very far away. And this," she said, tapping the drawing. "This was his vessel. His... star-ship. It's how he came to me. And it's what took him away."

As she looked upon the drawing, Sally's heart stilled in her chest and her eyes grew wide.

"The Doctor," she whispered, unaware that she had even said it aloud.

Startled, Joan looked up from the drawing and at the younger woman's face. "Yes," she whispered, her eyes becoming very serious, her wheaten brows drawing together. "That's what he called himself. It's who he was in his dreams, and it's who he became when..." She thought of the fobwatch, of the terrible golden glow that drifted from it when it was opened. Of the words... _Time Lord. Gallifrey_. Her breath hitched and her throat closed up, emotion taking over.

"...It's who he was all along, I suppose," she said, and nodded curtly. "I suppose that there never really was a John Smith. He was always the Doctor, underneath. A strange, silly man in a brown pinstriped suit with odd red canvas shoes on his feet. A man with a tool he called a screwdriver... but like no screwdriver I had ever seen. A man who spoke with a commoner's voice, a man who could never seem to keep his hair neat. A man with two hearts," she said, and a wry smile twisted her lips. "Two hearts, or so he said. But even between the two of them he still never would have been able to love me the way that John Smith did."

Shaking her head, she came out of her reverie, looking down at Sally Sparrow once more.

"You said his name," she gently probed. "Do you know of him?"

Sally just laughed, softly, once, and she looked up at Joan Redfern and smiled. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I know him. I _met_ him. He helped me... helped me defeat the things I told you about. The statues. The Angels. They came for me once before and he saved me from them. And he was just exactly the same man you described, right down to the red sneakers." She laughed again at the puzzled look on Joan Redfern's face, and it hit her all over again how far away from her own time she was. "The shoes," she explained, and shook her head. "It doesn't matter. What matters is he was the same. The very same. No _wonder _you believed me about the Angels," she marveled. "Once you've met the Doctor, you'll believe anything."

"It's both a blessing and a curse," Joan replied, then took the book gently from Sally's hands and closed it, securing the leather strap and bringing it back to the desk. She set it in the top drawer and slid the drawer closed, then locked it with the key around her neck.

Sally watched as the older woman went through what must be a sort of ritual for her, and she wondered how long the Doctor had been gone. "Was it very long ago?" she gently asked. "When he left? I only ask because... the room is still..."

"I couldn't bear to clear his things away," Joan explained, moving to the tall window and parting the curtains to look out at the rolling green fields below. "Naturally he didn't take them with him. They were his human-things. He had no use for them anymore, not wherever he was going. They didn't belong to him, you see. They belonged to John." A tight, pained smile stretched her lips for just a moment, and her eyes fixed on the focal point of the fields, the thing you could see no matter what window you looked out of on the west wing of the school.

"I suppose in time I'll have to make up the room for a new teacher," she said. "But for now, things can stay the way they are. It was only six weeks ago that he left, after all. And summer is approaching. There'll be no need to find a replacement for John until September. Until then, the room can stay just as it is. Not that I think he'll come back, mind you," she hastily explained, her eyes drawing away from the thing on the hill for a moment as she looked over her shoulder at Sally.

"Men never do, of course. But I've got the funniest feeling that it's especially true of the Doctor. I don't think he ever comes back for those he left behind."

Sally's heart sunk. "He didn't leave you any way of getting in touch with him, then?"

Joan shook her head, slowly and sadly. "Though he did ask me to go away with him," she recalled. "To travel with him. Across the stars." Her eyes returned to the window; to the thing on the hill. "I didn't see the point," she explained. "He wasn't John anymore, and John was the man I loved. From where I stood, the Doctor was just someone wearing a dead man's face. I couldn't stand to be in the same room as him, much less travel with him - across the stars or anyplace else."

Sally slowly and carefully crossed the room to the window. The two women stood quietly next to one another for awhile, looking out at the lush green hills. There was a scarecrow on one of the hilltops, Sally noticed. And something about it gave her a chill. She shivered, her shoulders trembling for one brief moment. Joan noticed it from the corner of her eye.

"He does that to you," she said. She wasn't talking about the Doctor anymore. "If you look at him for too long. Best not to."

"_He _does?" Sally echoed, unable to drag her eyes away from the scarecrow. "_Who _does?"

Joan pursed her lips together. "Nevermind," she said, and turned sharply away from the window. "Well, Sally," she announced as she walked across the room, heading for the door. "Since it appears that you'll be staying at the school for the time being, I suppose I had better find you a uniform. We're short two maids at the moment, so I hope you can keep a clean house. If you can't, you had better learn how, and quickly. It's the only excuse I've got to keep you around without the Headmaster getting suspicious."

"I can clean," Sally replied, but her voice seemed very distant, as if she were hearing it from the other end of a long tunnel. Her eyes were glued to the scarecrow. She didn't even blink. She raised a hand slowly, pressing her fingers to the glass.

"Sally!" Joan sharply called out to the girl. "Come along, now!"

Sally jumped, finally tearing her gaze from the scarecrow on the hill and then away from the window altogether. "Yes, ma'am," she replied, and gave the older woman a slight curtsy. If she intended to fit in around here, then she guessed she'd better start getting into character as quickly as possible.

She followed Joan out of the room and into the hallway, but before she closed the door behind them, she stole one last glance at the window. _Best not to_, Joan's voice echoed inside her head, and she shivered again, because she knew that however strong the warning had been, her curiosity would undoubtedly prove stronger.

To Be Continued...


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four:**

**"The Thing on the Hill"**

To her credit, she waited a week before she finally went to see the thing on the hill.

During that week, she filled her time with work. There was plenty of it. The Farringham School for Boys was a very large institution, and as such it took quite a bit of time to clean it from top to bottom. There were other maids on staff, but not as many as it seemed were needed; though with teenage boys, Sally already knew, you could give each one his own personal maid and he'd still manage to make a mess of things faster than anyone could clean it up.

When she wasn't working, she spent a lot of time with Joan Redfern, playing croquet in the garden or bridge in the drawing room or just sitting and talking. They grew to become fast friends; their encounters with the Doctor binding them in a way that nothing else could. Sally soon learned that it was a tough job being a woman in 1913. The way that the men and the boys barked orders at her or belittled her or simply looked right through her as though she wasn't there at all never ceased to shock and offend Sally, but Joan always seemed to take it in stride in that serene, elegant way she had of doing most everything. Sally had come to admire her quite a bit, and depend on her even more. There were no maid's quarters, and Sally had no home to go to, so Joan saw to it that she be allowed to stay in John Smith's old room. Sally thought it a bit daunting, staying in the room which had, at one point, belonged to the Doctor. She was, at first, afraid to touch anything, for fear she might break some valuable part of the space-time continuum, or something. Of course, that was silly. Joan had said that nothing the Doctor had left behind had truly belonged to the Doctor; they were his human-things, she said. The props he used to play the part of a man from Earth.

When there wasn't anything to do, she went to John Smith's room and read his journal of impossible things. She had read it three times over so far, looking for clues. Anything that could help her go back to the time she came from on her own or help her find a way to summon the Doctor to come and rescue her himself. There was nothing.

Or maybe she just hadn't found it yet.

On the long sleepless nights when the journal didn't help, she went to the window and peered out of it. At night, the scarecrow was no more than a shadow; a black silhouette against the ink-blue sky. Yet she could feel it looking back at her. And the more she looked at it the more convinced she was that it _knew _she was looking at it. That it knew, and it was beckoning her to come near.

She tried to ignore it. For awhile, when she'd looked at it too long and it seemed to be sucking her in, she would pry herself away from the window and draw the curtains closed, and she would go to her bed and lay down and close her eyes, trying to block out the mental image of the scarecrow on the hill. But even when she succeeded in that, something stranger would happen. She would begin to hear its voice.

She knew that was ridiculous. It was a scarecrow; a man stuffed with straw whose face was nothing more than ink on a burlap sack. But she heard it all the same, in her mind, calling to her in a deep voice laced with echoes and sibilants... most times it sounded like some great serpent king. It taunted her in a half-sympathetic, half-amused tone._ Come closer, little Time Girl_, it would say. _Poor lost little Time Girl, far from home_.

If she focused very hard the voice - the voice which sometimes sounded like the voice of a boy, and sometimes a serpent king, and sometimes many voices, all in one - would sometimes go away. But sometimes it would torture her for hours. Other strange things were happening, too. Sometimes when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she would catch something moving behind her image. Some flicker of motion, incredibly fast. So fast that most times it was only a blur. But once... once she thought she saw something specific.

Once she thought she saw a red balloon.

She didn't tell Joan of any of these things, for fear the woman might think she was starting to go mad. Sometimes she felt like she_ was_ starting to go mad, or that perhaps maybe she'd gone round the bend a long time ago. That maybe she was languishing in a rubber room at Bedlam already; that they had brought her there when she first came to 1913, ranting and raving about stone angels which had displaced her in time. And that she was there now, in her own little world where scarecrows communicated with her telepathically and red balloons floated around in the background of mirrors. It seemed entirely possible. As she had told Joan, once you meet the Doctor,_ anything_ seems possible. But she knew that it wasn't so. It couldn't be; the world felt too real. She could feel the hardwood floors under her knees, could hear the scraping sound the horsehair bristles made against them as she scrubbed them, could smell the fumes of the polish, so strong it made her eyes water.

This was no delusion. It was really happening. And she had to get to the bottom of it.

She went out early in the morning. Much earlier than she had ever left the school before; it was still half-night outside, that funny glowing place trapped between full-dark and dawn when the stars are still just slightly visible and the whole world is seen through a blue filter. She could smell the dew on the grass as she hurried through it, the long skirt of the dress that Joan had given her twisting and sashaying about her ankles. Though it was nearly summer she fancied she could see her breath in the air; in the country there was still a harsh chill in the air overnight this time of the year. No birds sang in the fields; either it was too early for them or they had abandoned this place for one less sinister. There was no real way to tell for sure.

Once she thought she heard a twig snap behind her, but when she turned around, no one was there. She kept running through the fields and the woods, and finally the terrain turned upward on her, got steeper, and she knew she had come to the hill. When she looked up she saw him; the scarecrow-man crucified on his wooden cross; tied there around his wrists and feet and waist with thick, rough twine. It was stranger, seeing him like this. There was a breeze in the air, one that made her hair and her skirt sway and levitate, one that would surely rock a man of straw from side-to-side with its strength. And yet the scarecrow-man stayed still. And when she climbed further up, got closer, she realized that it had a mass and weight unlike any scarecrow she had ever seen. And not only that, but its _dimensions_... it had been made to scale. It looked much smaller from the window, but once she got right up close to it, she realized it had to be at least_ six feet tall_.

"Why would anyone make a scarecrow so large?" she murmured to herself. She was close enough now to reach out and touch it, and she did - and as soon as her hand touched its torso, she yanked it back with a gasp as though she had touched something hot. The fact was, she_ had_ touched something hot - or at least, something oddly _warm_.

And she had not felt any straw.

Her breath was trapped in her lungs; her heartbeat seemed so much louder than it usually did. With trembling fingers, she reached out and placed her palm in the center of the scarecrow's torso again, and pushed. It was like pushing against... well, against a man's chest. It was firm, and warm, and she fancied she could even feel...

But no. She couldn't have felt a heartbeat. Scarecrows didn't have heartbeats.

And yet...

Her hand traveled upward, to the burlap sack that was the scarecrow's head. She placed her hand upon its cheek, and again she felt no straw. And she could not deny what she did feel. She felt the bone structure of a human face.

Without even thinking, her hand curled inward and she grasped the burlap in her fist and ripped it off in one go.

She stumbled backward a step, her breath catching in her throat again, her eyebrows furrowing together.

"Oh, my God," she said, her voice a dry whisper.

Hanging there, crucified there on the wooden cross, was a boy no older than she was. He had short dark hair swept over his brow in the old-fashioned style most of the boys at Farringham wore. He had pale green eyes and his dark brows were drawn down over them in a knowing glare. But the most jarring thing about him was the smirk he wore on his lips, upturned on only one side of his mouth. It was almost a sneer. It made him handsome, but in a very dangerous way.

"Have you been out here all night?" she asked him.

He did not respond.

"Who did this to you? Was it that boy Hutchinson? I'll bet it was him, that little wanker; this is just the sort of thing he'd do."

Again, there was no response. And Sally realized that it wasn't only that he wasn't _speaking_. He wasn't _moving, _either. He wasn't...

He wasn't even _blinking_.

He was just staring at her. Or through her. She couldn't tell which, so she took a sudden step to the right, and sure enough, his dark eyes remained fixed straight ahead of him, at the place where she had been just a moment before. He didn't blink. His smirk, held so crookedly in place, didn't even twitch. His hair fluttered in the breeze, but other than that, every part of him remained perfectly still.

It was as if... as if he were frozen in time.

She stepped to the left so that she was standing in front of him again, and after a moment she brought her hand up, hesitated for only a moment, and then put her palm against his cheek. She hadn't imagined it. He was so... _warm_. He was alive. But he didn't flinch at her touch, and still, he didn't blink.

"Why aren't you moving?" she asked him. She was growing more and more anxious with each moment that passed. "Why won't you speak to me? _Say_ something. Say_ anything_, just_ talk_ to me!"

"He can't."

The voice came from behind her, and was so sudden that Sally jumped and whirled around, adrenaline rushing through her veins and making her arms feel prickly as gooseflesh rose on them all at once. Her hand fell from the boy's cheek and her eyes wildly focused on _another _boy who had been standing a ways behind her in the clearing. His place further down the hill made him seem very small, but she knew that he was also small to begin with. His name was Tim Latimer, and she knew him only because he was the most picked-on boy at the Farringham School. Everyone, it seemed, had it in for him, but most especially the boy Hutchinson, who had seemed to make it his personal mission in life to make Tim Latimer's life a living hell.

For a moment, she was as speechless as the boy on the cross. Then sudden, improbable anger flooded her cheeks, turning them bright pink. "Did you follow me out here?" she cried.

Tim Latimer shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. He had been watching Sally Sparrow very closely since she came to the Farringham School. He had at first seen her on the shooting range, when she appeared out of thin air. The others had dismissed it almost as soon as it had happened; they told themselves she had been hiding behind one of the targets and she had just popped up when no one was looking. Tim understood that they told themselves these things because denial was a part of their survival, but he also understood that they were stupid for ignoring what was right in front of their faces. Especially after what had happened with the scarecrows.

He studied Sally the entire week that she had been there. She had a strange, confident way of holding herself that was very unlike the other women at the school. And he had overheard her speaking to Nurse Redfern, and the way that she spoke was so different from the way Joan did. In fact, she sounded quite a bit like that woman Martha Jones; the one who had come with the Doctor. And Tim knew that they sounded that way because they were from the future. He knew because sometimes he just knew things, and they turned out to be correct. That's also the reason why when he looked at Sally, he knew that she had been brought here by stone angel statues. He didn't know how such a thing could be, but he supposed that if scarecrows could walk and move about and kill people, then he supposed stone angels could do the same.

"Yes," he finally answered her, and there was a note of shame in his voice. He hadn't meant to invade her privacy. But he had woken up with a start because he heard a voice inside his head; a voice calling out to someone. Not to him, but to someone in the school. _Come closer, little Time Girl_, it said, and he had known at once that it was meant for Sally Sparrow. He got out of bed and went into the garden, and sure enough there she was, heading for the thing on the hill.

"I don't think you ought to stand so close to him, Sally," he said. "I don't think it's safe."

Sally laughed, once. Not because anything was funny but because her life had once been normal, and sane, and now it seemed to be splitting apart at the seams, and she was beginning to feel very strongly that she was clinging to the very last scraps of her sanity.

"Why?" she asked him. "Why isn't it safe? And why is he up here? Why is he tied to this post? And why won't he answer me?" She paused for a moment, and when she spoke next, her voice was strained with fright: "_Why won't he blink?_"

"Because he's frozen." Tim understood that the most important part of all of this, to Sally, was that the thing on the hill could not blink. He didn't know why, exactly; only that for whatever reason, Sally had an irrational fear of blinking. It was the oddest fear Tim had ever heard of, because no one could resist blinking. Sooner or later, you had to do it. And yet, she was terrified of doing it. He knew, then, suddenly, that sometimes she counted the seconds between her blinks, to see how long she could last before her eyes dried up and she had to.

He turned his mind away from her neuroses, because to dwell on them would only lead him further and further down the rabbit hole of her mind. When someone was scared, they became particularly easy to read. Easy to get lost in. But it was not always so easy to come back out again.

"It was the Doctor," he said. "The Doctor. Your old friend. I know that you know him because I can see him very clearly in your mind." He was quiet for a moment, and then he pointed at the thing on the hill. "When the Doctor was here, not so long ago, he froze him in time. And put him up on this hill. So that he couldn't hurt anyone anymore."

Sally shook her head. "I don't understand," she said. "Couldn't hurt anyone? He's just a boy."

"He isn't a boy," Tim replied. "Not really. He used to be one. He used to be a boy just like me. But then... these things came. They came and they took him, and changed him. Made him different. Made him... bad. Evil." He took an uneasy step forward. "They took others, too. A man from town, and a little girl, and a woman who used to be a maid at the school. They changed them, too. And they called themselves a family. The Family of Blood."

"Stop it." Sally had taken a step back when Tim Latimer had taken a step forward, and now her back was almost lined up with the front of the boy on the cross. She felt a strange protectiveness of him wash over her; a protectiveness that bordered almost on the possessive. She didn't know why, but she did not want Tim Latimer to take one step closer. She realized distantly that she had a headache; a great big pulse beating inside her temples. And when she blinked - it was rare, but she did it - she saw a kind of... green. Like a gaseous green cloud with a neon pulse in the center of it, beating in time with the pulse of her headache.

"Don't... don't come any closer," she said with her eyes closed.

"Sally," Tim began, reaching out with one hand. "Sally, come away from him. It isn't safe. The Doctor froze him, but I don't know how long the spell will hold now that he isn't here anymore."

"You're a liar," Sally said, and her headache worsened. She could hear the voice inside her head again, the voice that was like many voices, the voice that was like some great serpent king. _Come closer, Time Girl_, it whispered in its half-soothing, half-taunting tone. _Turn around and see me. See me very well. Look into my eyes_. Suddenly it didn't sound like many voices anymore. It sounded like only one. The voice of a boy. The crisp, educated voice of an English boy who had spent years inside proper British boarding schools. And she knew it was the voice of the boy trapped inside the frozen guise of a scarecrow on a hill.

_Look into my eyes, Sally Sparrow, and you shall see the truth_.

She turned slowly; carefully; as if in a trance. She supposed that perhaps, she sort of was.

"Sally," Tim Latimer was saying from behind her. "Sally, please. Please just take my hand and we'll go back to school."

She barely heard him. She slowly lifted her eyes to the face of the boy on the hill. His strange smirk and dark brows. His knowing glare. And his eyes. Those brooding green eyes, like bottomless poisoned chasms reaching far into the earth. She felt herself getting sucked into them; felt the oddest sensation of long, elegant fingers creeping into her brain and sifting through the files she kept stored there. It was searching for something, and as it searched she saw images flash before her eyes. The video store. The DVDs with the Doctor on them. All of Larry's precious Easter eggs. And then the Drumlins. The writing on the wall. And finally, the Angels, reaching for her with stone fingers hooked into claws. And being sucked through the vortex of time itself.

_Time Girl_, she heard inside her head._ Time Girl, Time Girl, Time Girl._ The voice echoed unto infinity. And then:

_Kiss me, Sally Sparrow. My Time Girl. Kiss me and set me free._

A chill shook her body like the wind shook dead leaves in the trees on a cold November night. The voice was very clear in its desire. She could not mistake its command. And a strange sensation took over her. It was as if a magnet were hidden inside her body; a very strange and powerful magnet drawn to the boy on the hill. She realized that she had been feeling the effects of that magnet ever since she landed in 1913, but it had never been stronger than it was right now. And she knew - even before she mounted to her toes and placed her hands on the shoulders of the frozen boy in the scarecrow costume - that she was helpless to resist.

The magnet inside her was life, and vitality, and the energy that the Angels had granted her that had made her able to travel through time. It was a golden glow buried deep within her; the fickle golden glow that made it so that she was dead in the future but alive in the past. Alive in a place where she should never be. It took a great amount of power to perform a transfer like that. The Doctor would know all about that power; he would know how to harness it and how to dispose of it. She supposed he would even know what it was called. Sally knew none of these things, and yet she knew that this golden glow - this spark of life - was exactly what the boy on the hill needed to become whole again. And she knew - as her lips touched his, pressing against that tireless smirk - how to give him life again.

Hands grabbed her shoulders and yanked her backward. She stumbled and tumbled down to a hard sit in the grass. She had half-fallen on top of Tim, and she was shaken hard from her trance. She had no idea what just happened, only that it seemed a great amount of energy had been sucked out of her. She had never felt so exhausted in all her life, so completely and totally spent.

"Why... why did I do that?" she asked, her voice slurred from exhaustion, her head feeling fuzzy with sleep. She imagined this must be how Dorothy felt when she woke up in the poppy fields outside of Emerald City, after the Wicked Witch had had her way.

"I tried to stop you," Tim honestly replied, but as his eyes climbed to the thing on the hill, he realized it didn't matter anyway. "But it's too late."

Energy was swirling around him, the boy whose name was once Jeremy Baines. It was a sparkling golden glow that filled his skin and made him luminescent in the rapidly rising sun. And, for a time, it was almost beautiful. But then another glow took hold. This one was a gaseous neon green, and it burst forth from his skin, corrosively eating into the golden nimbus that had formerly surrounded him, bloating itself into a great green cloud. And then, all at once, it sucked back into the body of the boy with frightening speed.

Sally looked up at him, her breath caught in her throat.

Nothing happened for a very long moment.

And then he blinked.

...To Be Continued...


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five:**

**"The Plot, As They Say, Thickens"**

For a moment that seemed to stretch out as far and wide and infinite as time itself, Sally couldn't even bear to breathe. She didn't move, and she didn't speak, and she most _certainly _didn't blink. She couldn't. She heard herself dimly counting off the seconds in her head - _One_-chimpanzee, _two_-chimpanzee, _three_-chimpanzee, _four _- even though the Angels were nowhere in sight. She realized distantly that this had become a rather bad habit for her, but it didn't bother her. On the contrary, it provided some small comfort. She realized she had been able to count ever higher as the days wore on.

She blinked at _eight_-chimpanzee, when her eyes began to water, and, as if by magic, the boy on the hill drew a great gasping breath, coming to life all at once, his eyes and features seeming to almost sparkle with the hidden electricity of human animation and color flooded his formerly pale face. At first he seemed to be able to concentrate only on his breathing, and then he looked down at himself; at the ropes around his waist, and then he turned his head from side to side to regard the ones around his wrists. Seemingly bewildered, he appeared to begin to panic. He looked up, his eyes focusing on Tim Latimer, furrowing his dark brows.

"How did I get up here?" he asked in the clipped, educated English accent she had heard inside her head. "See, now - is this some sort of a joke? I don't find it very funny, I'll have you know. Was this your doing, Latimer? The Headmaster will hear of this, I can promise you that."

Sally stared at him for a moment, then turned and looked crossly at Tim. "He_ is_ just a boy," she said, and hurried to her feet, brushing dirt and stray blades of grass from her skirt. "I told you. I knew it."

She knew that she still couldn't explain some things. She couldn't explain the voice she heard at night - the voice which sometimes sounded so much like his, but sometimes sounded like some great serpent king - but perhaps that was something else entirely. Some odd mark left on her by the time vortex; some connection from another time and place, like crossed telephone wires or interference on a walkie-talkie.

She also couldn't explain his frozen expression when she first got here. Perhaps Tim was right in some respects - perhaps this boy_ had_ been under a spell - but surely it could not have been a spell cast by the Doctor. The Doctor only doled out punishment to the great big baddies of the world, and if this boy were really the evil creature that Tim had made him out to be, then certainly he wouldn't be threatening to tattle to the Headmaster. Surely he could find grander means for revenge.

"Tim, come help me get him off this thing." She stooped to observe the ropes around his ankles, although Tim made no move to help. The ropes were knotted, but carelessly, as if the person who strung him up wasn't much concerned with keeping him steady; as if they had other ways of doing that. She thought of how frozen he had been when she took off the scarecrow mask; how perfectly still he was. But then she pushed the thought strongly away. Best not to think of it. Best…

_Best not to_, came Joan Redfern's voice inside her head, and her hands stilled for just a moment on the knots. Then she untied them quickly and efficiently, and stood up, putting her hands on the ropes around his waist.

"Sally," Tim interjected, climbing to a stand and taking a few steps closer. "I don't think you'd better do that…"

"Well, hello," came the voice of the boy then, just beside her ear, and when she pulled back he was looking at her. He had that smile on his face, that lopsided smirk that he had been wearing when she first took the mask off - she found it both exceedingly charming and exceedingly frightening at once. "A girl on school grounds? Now where-ever did you come from? You aren't Latimer's, I hope. That would be such a waste. Not to mention quite a shock - We all thought he fancied boys."

"And so what if he did?" Sally heard herself retort, in a free-and-easy sort of way that managed to hide how mixed-up she felt inside; terror and excitement rushing in equal measure through her veins. "That's his business, not yours."

The boy appeared momentarily taken aback, and then he smiled, his jade green eyes widening in surprise - and, just under the surface, something very much like hunger. "How… _bohemian_," he marveled. "Latimer, where-ever did you meet her?"

"I'm a maid," Sally answered automatically, her hands going to the knots again and working at them quickly. The ropes came free all at once and slumped to the floor like the abandoned skins of shedding snakes. "I work at the school. _Your_ school."

"Is that right?" the boy answered, his interest piqued. "How curious. I could never bring myself to focus on my studies with the thought of someone as young and lovely as you on her hands and knees scrubbing up the place." He squinted at her, long and hard. "Are you _sure_ you're a maid? You don't look like one. Not in the slightest."

Wild horses couldn't have dragged away the blush which formed unbidden in Sally's cheeks, despite all her intentions. "You don't look like a scarecrow," she answered back. "And yet, here you are."

"Indeed, here I am," the boy returned. "The plot, as they say, thickens." That smirk again. It was beginning to drive her mad, but the worst of it all was that she didn't exactly mind. "Tell me - what is your name, girl?"

Sally looked up at him sharply; it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he knew her name already. Of _course_ he knew it, he _had_ to know it; he had whispered it to her in her mind.

But of course, there was no guarantee it had been him. Maybe she really had gone a bit batty, trapped here in the country in 1913. Maybe she had imagined the whole bloody thing. And as for what Tim had said... well, maybe Tim was just taking the piss. It wouldn't be the first time a boy thought it was funny to play tricks on her.

"Sally Sparrow," she answered dutifully. "What's yours?"

"Baines," he replied, his eyes focused very intently on hers. "Jeremy Baines."

Tim listened carefully to the exchange between the two. He didn't like that they were talking - it didn't feel safe to him - but he couldn't think of any reason to stop them from doing it. He had been focusing purely on Baines, looking for any sign that things were not right. He was studying him not only with his eyes and his ears, but with his mind as well. Scanning his brain, trying to pick up anything at all that seemed out of place. But it was as if he had come up against a brick wall. A huge barricade blocking him out.

"I wouldn't let him free if I were you," he said warily, his eyes never leaving Baines' face. "There's no telling what he'll do."

"Oh come now, Latimer, you're being ridiculous," Baines replied, then appealed to Sally. "He's a petulant little shit, that one. You'd be wise to steer clear. He's always telling tales out of school, talking about how he can read minds. But really he's just a pathological liar." He regarded her for a moment, that smirk returning to his lips. "Will you untie the rest of me, Sally Sparrow? I have been here all night, after all. I don't even remember how it is I came to be bound here like this. I suspect Latimer must have put something in my water glass last night that it knocked me flat."

"And then I dragged you out here by myself?" Tim challenged the older boy. "I never would have been able to, and you know it." Something else that Baines had said had nagged at him, as well. He had said that Tim told him he could read minds. But Tim had never said that, not once - not in those words. He had simply said that sometimes he said things that turned out to be correct. He had actually gone to great lengths to hide his odd ability from the other boys. He didn't want them to know that he knew some of their deepest, darkest secrets and desires. They would only beat him harder if they knew.

"You had help, then," Baines shot back. "Hutchison thought it would be a good show to get revenge on me for not bringing back any beer last night. That _was_ last night, wasn't it?" He furrowed his brows. "My head is all... fuzzy."

"That was six weeks ago." Tim said it evenly, managing to keep all anger and suspicion from his voice. "Six weeks at least."

"_Six_ weeks…?" Baines went inside his head somewhat; appeared to do some quick mental calculation. When his eyes returned to Latimer, it was only for a brief moment, but Tim easily caught the distress present in his eyes. He couldn't say exactly why, but he was certain it had little to do with not being able to _remember _the six weeks that had passed, and that it had more to do with the fact that six weeks had passed _at all_.

"That's a great bloody long time, Latimer," he said, appearing completely unnerved now. "A great bloody long time indeed."

"Do you not remember any of it at all?" Sally asked, drawing her hands up to his left wrist and untying the knot there. He drew his hand in toward his chest when the rope fell, flexing his fingers and staring at it as though it were a thing he never saw before - or thought he might never see again. It wasn't lost on Sally that Jeremy Baines was a very strange person, but she didn't think he was what Tim had said he was, either. _The Family of Blood_, he had said. She shivered. No… he was far too human to be anything like that.

"Bits and pieces, I suppose," Baines replied, reaching over with his free hand to undo the tie around his opposite wrist himself. "I suppose it will all come back to me. I must have fallen and taken a sound knock to the head. They say a man can lose the memory of his entire life if he is struck in just the right place, you know." With both hands freed, he took one step forward and immediately staggered, nearly falling, his atrophied leg muscles protesting at his sudden weight. Sally caught him in her arms, and at kissing distance she was able to see the fright in his eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Quite," Baines replied, that smirk lighting one side of his mouth again. "And I thank you most kindly for freeing me, Sally Sparrow. I only hope that one day you may allow me to return the favor."

Something about the way he said it made her mind go to the journal; to the nights she had spent scouring each and every word, looking for the magic key held within which might send her home. The Doctor had written her messages on the walls and had left them in hidden menu options on DVDs in Larry's rental shop; surely leaving her a secret code in an old journal of his would have been child's play for him. Surely there must be something in there which would set her free from what bound her to 1913.

Why she was thinking of this now she had no idea. It wasn't as if Jeremy Baines could know she was from the future and she was looking for a way to get back to it. He had only said what he said to be polite.

"We'll see," she enigmatically replied, her hands still holding him at the waist. "For now though, I think we'd better get you to the nurse. Have her examine that bump on your head."

Tim Latimer would have bet his very last farthing that there was no bump on Baines' head at all, but he said nothing. After all, telling Nurse Redfern that the scarecrow had been let loose from the hill would be the best for all involved. Nurse Redfern would know exactly what to do. She had been the Doctor's friend, after all - or, perhaps, even more than that - and so she would know. She _must_ know. Tim was sure of it.

"I think that's an excellent idea, Sally," Tim replied, folding his arms over his chest indignantly. "We'll go and tell Nurse Redfern, and she'll sort all of this out."

There was a momentary flash of panic in Baines' eyes, but it was gone in an instant. "Fine," he agreed. "The nurse it is. Though I may need to lean on you," he warned Sally with a smile. "I'm not entirely certain my legs can be trusted at the moment."

Tim wasn't entirely certain _any _part of him could be trusted, but he sidled up on the other side of Baines and allowed the older boy to sling one arm over his narrow shoulders anyway, and with a little effort they helped him down the hill.

They left behind only the wooden post the scarecrow had once been strapped to, and the burlap mask laying forgotten in the grass. It smiled its sinister grin at the rapidly lightening sky, its pitch black eyes glaring out at the universe in the waking dawn.

The sight of it frightened even the last of the night stars out of existence.

…To Be Continued…


	6. Chapter 6

_[Disclaimer - I took some liberties with The Family of Blood's race/home planet, as not much background info was given on them in the actual episodes. So I just sort of made stuff up. Hope you enjoy! Also, some edits are coming soon to the first 5 chapters - very minor things, such as editing out Rocastle's name and adding a new headmaster - I stupidly forgot that he got obliterated by Sister of Mine in the 2nd episode. So, Chapter 7 might take a bit longer as I'm going to work on these edits first. I do so hate posting fanfic that's incorrect, even in the slightest way. I feel like it does my readers a great disservice. BTW, Thank you everyone for all your kind and helpful reviews. I plan to reply to each and every one of them this week. OK, Now on with the show...]_

**Chapter 6:**

**"Son of Mine"**

Deep within the darkest recesses of the schoolboy's mind, the serpent king lay in wait. Far and long ago, his race had been great, formidable enemies who had a lifespan of nearly a thousand years. They even had forms of their own; huge and menacing forms. Green scales and yellow eyes and spiny backs and long, sharp saber-like fangs that curled into enemy flesh and gored huge chunks of dripping crimson life from it. They slithered through the majestic dark forests of their home planet, through the caverns and treehouses which made up their cities. They had no use of speech; they communicated using their minds. They powered their cities with their own psychic energy. And they had ships; ships with enough firepower to level whole universes to the ground. But then, the Daleks came.

They came to conquer; came to harness the psychic power of their race and use the energy to their own devices. They turned his race into slaves, screaming at them in their tinny, electric voices to obey. So for hundreds of years that was just exactly what they did. They obeyed. Mother of Mine obeyed. Father of Mine obeyed. Sister of Mine obeyed. And all the others. Millions of them, obeying the sinister robots which ravaged their forests with their filth.

It took nearly one hundred years for Son of Mine to lead the revolution against the Daleks. And when it finally happened, when revolution finally came, they were unsuccessful. The Daleks were too smart, too strong. They saw the uprising coming from miles away. They gave no second chances. They simply leveled their eyestalks at the serpent race and declared in their hateful metallic voices, "EXTERMINATE!"

They wiped out thousands. Millions. Soon the entire planet had turned to dust. But that was where the contingency plan came into play. For what the Daleks didn't know was that to take away their physical form before natural death could occur was, for the great serpent race, only half a death. For they lived on even afterward, in the form of incorporeal gaseous green clouds. The Daleks could find no way to exterminate that which was purely energy. They fired their eyestalks again and again but could not defeat the serpent race in its most basic form. And so the great serpent race fought back; inhabiting Daleks, forcing them to fire at each other, forcing them to kill each other off. And as each Dalek fell, the green gaseous clouds simply seeped out, congratulated each other on the victory, and inhabited another Dalek. And so it went, on and on, until all the Daleks that had been stupid enough to challenge their planet were laid to waste.

However, with no physical forms left to take on, the great serpent race was forced to get in their ships and pilot them telepathically to other planets so that they could take on other forms. Most forms proved useless in a matter of months - some lived longer than others, but not by much, and they quickly discovered that the further they had to travel to try and find more suitable, lasting forms, the less time they had to spend on their home planet before they had to go out in search of a new one again. In conquering the Daleks, they had given up not only their beautiful scales and spines, their most precious bodies, but in the end, they had given up their home planet all over again. Son of Mine had failed. He had doomed his race to wandering the stars for all eternity, searching for the perfect host.

He took his family - The Family of Blood - and they, too, wandered the stars. Along the way they ran into humanoid Time Agents, and took their forms. The technology they possessed proved quite useful, specifically their vortex manipulators. They were now able to travel through time as well as space, which would have allowed them to shorten their trips back and forth from their home planet considerably. But the lifespans of their hosts were still far too short. They needed a stronger host. One that could live ten times as long. Or perhaps even one that could live forever.

Of course, the only race that could live forever was the race of Time Lords, and they were long dead, and their planet - the infamous red-skied wonder known as Gallifrey - was under time-lock, never to be visited again. Not even with a vortex manipulator.

But then they came to a planet - just a silly little rock with not much more than saliva and a prayer holding it in orbit - and on that planet came another visitor as well. A visitor in a bright blue box called the TARDIS. They had taken other forms by then, cyclopean beasts with a limited range of vision. They smelled him rather than saw him. The Doctor. The last of the Time Lords. The very, very last.

That was when they made the decision. Son of Mine would take his form. The form of a Time Lord, and with the power a Time Lord possessed he would never die. He would regenerate and live infinite lifetimes, and with the technology inside his TARDIS, he would find a way to get his planet back. To go back in time and defeat the Dalek race. The Time Lords had been the Daleks most formidable enemy, after all; surely if anyone could defeat them it would be the Doctor.

They followed the TARDIS through time and space, from planet to planet and century to century. But they never quite caught up with it. And then, somehow, they lost it completely. They landed on Earth in the early 20th century but they lost the trail. Lost his scent. And so they took forms, and they assimilated as best they could, doing recon to try and find the Doctor. They found him, of course. But he defeated them as easily as swatting flies. He trapped Sister of Mine in the Mirror-World, chained his father with dwarf star alloy, and threw Mother of Mine into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy. Perhaps most insulting of all, he froze Son of Mine in time and stuck him on a hill dressed as a scarecrow. A thing not even the birds were afraid of.

It had perhaps been quite amusing for the Doctor to accomplish that.

But he wouldn't be laughing very long.

While Son of Mine had been trapped inside the awkward adolescent body of the schoolboy perched on the edge of manhood, frozen in time on a hill in the English countryside, his body had been bound to a wooden cross, but his mind had been bound by no one. Not Human nor Dalek nor Time Lord could bind the mind of the serpent race, and Son of Mine found that he could communicate easily with his family, even though their forms were separated so cruelly. So he had spent the last six weeks communicating with them. Plotting. Planning. And reaching out with their minds in frantic desperation to find even the slightest hint of a time traveler within their disparate vicinities. Time Lord, Time Agent, or even just some unfortunate soul who stumbled upon the void. And that last bit was just exactly what Son of Mine found. A girl barely out of her teenage years who had been taken by the strange race of the Weeping Angels and displaced in a different time. A time which just so happened to be the time that Son of Mine was trapped in. It was almost too perfect; almost as if they had gotten together with the Angels and planned it, though Son of Mine knew that they had done no such thing. It was just one of those happy accidents. A very happy accident indeed.

He knew she would have energy left swirling inside of her. Time energy given to her by the Angels so that she would be able to travel through the vortex with no technology to aid her. And it was just exactly that energy he needed to reverse the freezing process. Luring her to him had been child's play. What would be the real challenge would be sufficiently mimicking the form which he had taken on. The only time they had to assimilate into the world of their forms was when they were looking for the Doctor, and they had been very poor imitations. They had no idea about the history of their forms; had no interest in delving into the brains of their humans to educate themselves about things like personality, and mannerisms, and memories. They were in a rush, and they did a rush job, and it had been a poor show indeed. But the six weeks that the Doctor had granted Son of Mine before Sally Sparrow came along had been more than enough time for him to completely absorb the brain of one Jeremy Baines, former student at the Farringham School for Boys.

He learned all that he could; soaked in all his memories, learned all his opinions, discovered all his quirks and idiosyncrasies. And by the time Sally Sparrow came to him in the dawn and pressed her mouth to his in the kiss that set him free, he knew he would, like a great method actor, be able to portray the role of Jeremy Baines with absolute and pristine accuracy. He would_ become_ Baines, in a sense.

He had no more than a month before this form expired, and he already felt it weakening. But somehow he didn't think the Doctor would wait that long before returning. It was crunch time, then. He would have to gain the humans' trust. And he would have to send a distress call to the rest of the serpent race. With the vortex manipulator technology they had begun replicating on their home planet, they should be able to come to Earth in 1913 with relatively little difficulty. And when the Doctor came back to freeze him again - as he undoubtedly would - Son of Mine would have a new army at his command. Not an army of straw, this time, oh no.

This time, he would have an army of flesh.

...To Be Continued...


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven:**

**"Ding"**

His song was ending; that's what the Ood had said. They had sung in his dreams for weeks or months - in truth he couldn't tell how long anymore. He'd long since lost all track of linear time. Living in the TARDIS there was no time, not really. He could barely even calculate his own age anymore. He was over 900, of that much he was certain. Beyond that? No clue. He made stabs at it here and there, usually said a different number every time that he was asked. It had become a joke of sorts. But he guessed it really didn't matter anymore. He would live forever, that was his curse. But his song was ending now. So it had been prophesied, just as it had once been prophesied that he was not alone.

But now he _was _alone.

So desperately, terribly alone.

Martha had gone off with Mickey and Jack. Sarah-Jane had gone home with K-9 to take care of her son. Rose would live a happy life now with his identical human counterpart; it was the closest thing to his own love that he could give her; the closest he could come to saying it out loud was with a mirror-version of his own lips. It shamed him, but it was true. He couldn't let those words pass his lips, because to do so would have doomed Rose to spend her entire life traveling with him; never marrying, never having children, never settling down. Bouncing from one dangerous situation to another until one of them eventually lead to her death.

He turned his mind away. He didn't want to think about Rose dying. It was a possibility he had to face too many times while they were traveling together, and it wasn't something he ever wanted to think about again. She would be happy, that was all that was important. He would miss her terribly, miss her with an ache down to his very bones, but it would be worth it, because she would be happy, and in a lot of ways, the best part of him was already with her now. John Smith was, after all, the human part of him, the part that could love her without abandon.

At least she had gotten the happy ending she deserved.

He couldn't say the same for Donna.

Somehow, thinking of the feisty redhead who had so abused him during their brief time together made his heart hurt ten times more than thinking of Rose did. Because Donna had been his friend, his very best friend, and she had loved traveling just for the pure joy of it. Everything she saw, she saw with a newborn's wide-eyed innocence and wonder. She wanted to help everyone they met, wanted to save them all. She accepted alien life unconditionally; treated them all as her equals. She was a fantastic companion, and when it came time for her to sacrifice herself to save him, she had soaked up all the knowledge of the time vortex like a sponge, and she had been so briefly brilliant that she had surpassed even the Doctor himself in cleverness and intelligence. She had been the DoctorDonna, and the Ood would sing her name in their songs for all eternity.

And he'd had to be the one to take it all away.

To send her crashing, spiraling back down into the abyss of normalcy; into her humdrum little life in Chiswick that she had been so desperate to escape.

He'd had no choice, of course. To keep her in the TARDIS, to keep her traveling with him while that abundance of knowledge gnawed at her brain, eating away at everything that kept her human - everything that kept her _alive_ - would be to sign her death warrant. It had started so quickly, so shockingly fast. She had been fine - more than fine, she had been _brilliant_ - and then…

_- Binary, binary, binary, binary -_

She had been dying. And it was all his fault. So he did the only thing he could do. He took it away from her - took it _all _away. Every single scrap of memory linked to him and to the TARDIS and to all the worlds and times they visited together. And he'd doomed her to the life she had so hated.

He'd doomed himself too, of course. Because now he'd lost everyone. Everyone that had ever meant anything to him was gone.

But it always ended this way, didn't it?

The Doctor always stands alone in the end.

He sighed, leaning over the controls with his head hung low, his mess of brown hair sticking up in stiff peaks, his eyes troubled, his brows furrowed. There were ten billion universes out there and he couldn't think of even one planet - not even one _moon_ - that would make him feel any better than he did just now. Well, maybe one planet. But that planet was lost to him forever.

He looked up at the controls, seeing levers he could pull, buttons he could push. When his friends were on board every flip of a switch had been a joy. Now it all seemed like so much work.

He straightened up, running a hand through his hair, making it even more unruly. He had no idea where he wanted to go, but in situations like this, it was best to let the TARDIS take him wherever she wanted to go.

"At least I've still got you," he softly said, reaching out and placing a hand on the console, stroking it adoringly. "You and me 'til the end, old girl, how does that sound?"

_Ding!_

The noise - like the chiming of a little silver bell - had practically come by way of a response, and it took the Doctor completely by surprise. His eyes widened. "You've never done _that_ before," he murmured.

_Ding!_

He realized on its second go that the noise wasn't actually coming from the console, it was coming from _behind _him, and he whirled around, looking for its source. He found it after a moment, perched on one of the benches, and his whole face lit up.

"Ah-HA!" he declared, striding over to the device already half-bent to retrieve it, like a man about to cross the finish line in an egg race. He snatched it off the bench, where it had been resting so harmlessly ever since he and Martha got stuck in 1969.

_It's my timey-wimey detector_, he had explained to Billy Shipton, the unfortunate police detective who had been displaced in time by the Weeping Angels. _It goes ding when there's stuff_.

Ding when there's stuff indeed - time anomalies, mostly. Things that could not possibly be, and yet they were. People who should not exist in a particular place and time, and yet they did. And every now and then the timey-wimey detector - he _really _needed to come up with a better name for it - detected something else as well. Not just a poor lost soul wandering out of their own time, but a great big baddie that wouldn't do anyone any good if it persisted in loitering about. The more dings, the worse the situation would likely be - and, of course, the more exciting as well.

"Oh, you are _beautiful!_" he exclaimed, hugging the detector to his chest briefly before holding it out again, checking for a read-out. There was nothing yet, only flashing lights. "Ding again," he coaxed it. "Come on, let's have a ding! And a ding! _And another dinnnng-ah!_"

_Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!_

"HO YES!" the Doctor yelled, and ripped his glasses out of his coat pocket with one hand, snapping them open and slipping them on with expert, liquid grace. The little screen on the detector scrolled coordinates in green digitized text, and he memorized them with just one look, then set the detector back where it had been and whirled around, dashing back to the control board.

He hadn't forgotten his lost friends in his excitement - he would never forget them, not any of them. Not one face. But from the first time he set foot in this big blue box so many centuries ago, he had been running away. Running away from everyone he had ever loved, everyone who he had ever hurt or been hurt by. Running away from his own destiny. And no matter how far he ran, it kept catching up with him, but he could stop running no more than he could bring all those beloved faces back again and surround himself with them until the end of time itself.

He had to keep going. There were others out there to save. New worlds to see. New friends to make. New enemies to defeat - and who knows? Maybe some old ones, too.

So he flipped switches. He turned dials. He pulled levers. And he pushed buttons. Oh, yes. Lots and lots of buttons.

"Allons-y!" he finally cried, and hit the console with his rubber hammer.

The TARDIS boomed and whirred merrily as it took off, carrying him faithfully through time and space.

…To Be Continued…


End file.
